As known, safety deposit boxes are personal safes for securing valuable items that would be difficult or impossible to replace. As used herein, the phrase “safety deposit box” (also sometimes referred to as a “safe deposit box”) generally refers to a physical safe or other strongbox for storing physical items deemed important or valuable by a person controlling the safety deposit box. The safety deposit box is often grouped with other safety deposit boxes and is located within a vault in a bank or other financial institution.
Safety deposit boxes are used for a variety of reasons, including privacy, security, and prevention of loss. Safety deposit boxes allow an owner to store whatever it is he/she wants without anyone else knowing about the contents of the boxes unless the owner so desires. Safety deposit boxes also offer protection from fire, water damage, or unlawful taking. Typically, personal property owners will often keep valuable property in a closet, safe, or file cabinet that is located in a home or an office. These locations only offer a minimal amount of protection from various dangers because anything stored in these locations would still be subject to fire, water damage, or unlawful taking. Items kept in a safety deposit box would be virtually immune to any of these dangers. Additionally, insurance companies will often charge lower rates to insure valuables when they are kept in a safety deposit box because they are less likely to be damaged or stolen.
People use safety deposit boxes for all different types of valuables. Some people store jewels, baseball card collections, or other tangible collectible items, while others store important documents such as insurance polices, family records, deeds, leases, stock, bonds, CD certificates, documentation in the form of pictures for insurance purposes, or other types of contracts. Some safety deposit boxes contain simple nostalgic items that have no value outside of the family such as family photographs or videos, but are nonetheless items that people do not want to risk losing. Whatever items are stored in safety deposit boxes it is clear that the owners of the items want to keep them safe, protect them from damage, and prevent loss of the items.
Despite the advantages of safety deposit boxes there are several issues that can arise if a safety deposit box owner is not careful. For instance, customers often keep a paper inventory of their safety deposit box. These lists can be lost or misplaced, and they can also be destroyed by fire, water, or unlawful taking. Furthermore, customers not may keep or have easy access to any records that they even have a safety deposit box; therefore abandonment is often a legitimate problem with many safety deposit boxes. Abandonment occurs when an owner fails to pay the safety deposit rental payment for a number of months or years and thereafter numerous attempts to notify the owner fail. This often occurs after a safety deposit box owner passes away and the estate is not aware that the deceased owned a safety deposit box. In the case of abandonment, the safety deposit box's contents will be turned over to the State's unclaimed property office. Even though the heirs of the deceased still own the right to the contents of the safety deposit box or the value of contents after they are sold, the heirs often have no idea that the State seized the contents of the box in the first place.
If a record of the inventory of the safety deposit box is not kept, customers must visit their safety deposit boxes frequently to refer to and determine what items are located in the safety deposit box. This is an inconvenience to the customer and requires full time employee support from the banking branches to serve the customer.